September 06, 2011

Can't wait to get the books through, although I have a feeling that will change dramatically by the time I hold them in my hands. I'm going to have to deal with these memories and aim towards to a place where I don't need to smoke. That's the plan anyway...

Today has been a strange mixture of feeling crushed and okay. I am accepting I need a lot of attention right now and for the foreseeable future and am so much less annoyed with myself for not being 'normal'. I could smile at myself for not doing the dishes tonight, they are soaking and can be easily rinsed in the morning. I will need to stay busy tomorrow morning away because I will be weedless, which will be all lot more bearable now I've realised myself from the course and have ordered healing books. I feel like I'm going through something important right now, its really starting to sink in that I have options and futures now. That the decisions I make effects my future - fancy that..

My little spiritualism is still vulnerable but getting better. I know I still need it, some sort of vague faith in forces in the universe that are so far unknown. Experience and insight taught me it was bad to let someone else tell you what religious truth is, it is personal and unique to everyone. I believe that so little is understood about life in general but people's brains in particular that the truth would sound like magic. I believe in telepathy and shared hallucinations that can be manipulated. I believe in these things because I have experienced them and was charged with developing skills to enable people to control others telepathically. I am well past believing all this is just a pretty story made up to hide the truth because it is the truth that I made up stories to protect me from. It was all about extremes, and harnessing the powers that people have when they endure extremes stress. I wish I did not have these beliefs but it could be worse, after all I believe in 'group hallucinations' not resurrection or instant healing that I have heard other survivors discuss. I have those memories to but can't believe them, partly because it seems so impossible but partly because I was involved behind the scenes more. Something about the way I split made me very useful to some. It's horrible there is so much information in me that could help so many others but I am just not able to go to the places in my head that I would need to. But there needs to be more to me than 'ritual abuse', more than a machine that churns out the past for the benefit of others.

Saying that I know I have a lot more to say and will be blogging by thoughts and reactions to 'The Courage to Heal' to help me sort it all out in my own head and just to have a voice I suppose. But I'm keeping my odd beliefs with pride, for the moment anyway.

I couldn't say much of this to your face. I learned that talking about rape and telepathy in the same breath isn't too smart, kind of takes away your credibility. So I had to start compartmentalising it all, making layers of truth for me to uncover when the time was right.

Then of course I was always interested in spirituality, religion, ideas about the soul and such so maybe the abuse would have looked very different to me if my head wasn't full of the otherworldly already? One things for sure there was diffidently a lot of rape and a lot of drugs and the occasional murder.

September 05, 2011

Thats why you have to get down to gory details sometimes - it cleans. The dramatherapy must been working its magic. The invite to drink in a pub after the session this week is helping me feel brave and a social animal to though. It's very cool to have a friend. I've completly lost all interest in her sexually though and have gone back to thinking about a good honest working class men again, as I tend to do. I think I can say with almost total certainty that I would turn down one of them right now to: sex? yuck.
Although I am vaguely warmed by the thought of sex at a later point in my healing journey...
I hope I'm right in thinking I'm ready for 'The Courage to Heal', I went through a patch before of reading self help books and I'm actualy looking forward just to be reading anything in book form again. I have to be able to stay calm whenver I read something that I don't agree with. The issues are so major and aimed at the vunrable I'm so worried about the damage brought by bad advice that I expect to see it every where. I don't always give them a chance, how can I if it is making me feel very bad, very inferior and marginalised. I need to put my finger on exactly what it is in healing literature that I have a problem with, instead of avoiding the problem. I also need to cry, write down memories and curl up into a rocking ball a bit more if I am ever to deal with my smoking. All crying, rocking and writing is what reading that book did to me last time. I hate the feeling that some older women has so much power over me as I feel when I read some healing literature. I expect the writers to be in some sort of cult, maybe not a major regular one but an occasion one that had rare special occasions where I or another like me would be invited. How can I read on when I think that about it the writer? How can I consider myself healed if I can't even pick up a book on child abuse without falling to pieces?
On the other hand, maybe I know something about the publishing industry that makes me distrust it, maybe my intellect and the extremes I went through have put me beyond the reach of most literature, maybe I really am better than all that? Bollox, of course because its literature that I can skim whenever I choose about issues I have searched to define. I trust in little tough me, she is getting stronger and loves telling me what to keep and what to ignore when I'm reading. Which is probably why all I can read is twitter and my own poems. I can tell in the way she holds her self, she's glad to be back.

I don't remember how it started but I remember making films where I had to 'drink Daddy's milk' they kept us dehydrated to encourage us to swallow, as usual with me, it took a lot of takes.

Don't know when it started without anyone else involved though, but it was bad in my early teens, until I learned enough violence to fight him off. But I remember the red glow of a cigarette and his smell in the dark when I was younger, and that horrible feeling that he was 'one of them' to and that I had no hope. He is an alcoholic and of course that doesn't mean he did it anymore than my mother's smoking is a means as a blocking her inability to stop it. But as I write this I see her screaming no and launching at him and an earlier memory of middle sis telling me it was all my fault. Did he rape me in front of them? That might of been to much for my mother, behind closed doors is one thing in the living room in front of everyone without any others - my mother tolerated it all by compartmentalising this would have crossed a boundary for her. Stuff at parites of course there was always drugs and it started too young for me to remember anything real. Just that feeling of being in a room after it happened, staring at the same objects and patches on the wall I stared at then. Telling myself then that I knew it was happening, that I loved her, think I stopped telling her it would never happen again. I was so small.

So am I going to end up remembering it all? Or walking around accepting that as a child and young adult I was drugged up by strangers, family and friends and handed about at parties like a toy. They would always arrange for any possible friends I had to be at the next one. I'd hang around with people I knew would fail me because at least then I wouldn't get my heart broken quite so much. How do I reclaim my body after that?

'She likes it'

I just don't get how getting someone wasted and fucking them in front of people could be entertaining. So it would happen again because I just couldn't believe those around me would let that happen to me never mind take part.

So I smoked joints, like I am now so that the present becomes the past, the pain turn to aches, my muscles relax and my brain turn to prettier things, pretty things in me that I kept for myself and no one else. I'm thinking I could maybe share them more now.

The comments left on my blog post 'I am Selfish' have really helped me get my priorites in order. I need to focus on me right now, I knew it would happen. Once I moved away from my dad and the family home where so much hell happened I would find myself wanting to think all the time and not able to do much else. As much as I dont want to quit my studies, I've not been able to read properly for months because I can't focus long enough. Putting myself through an exam would not be helpful. I just hope that when I go back the OU will still be up for paying. I feel so grateful for the open university for all the courses and funds they given me, this computer, my flights to London for the Summer School, so much stuff in life that has been good and needed has come from the OU. I feel like I'm letting them down whenever I get a bad grade so quiting another course is not an easy decsion but one I feel I need to make right now for the best interests of myself and my wee man.

I'm just not in the right place to argue with the ideas of Descartes, Mill and so many others. Their ideas were used in the ritual abuse to, not that I can remember how exactly beyond books being used as physical weapons that is. Having intellectual dicussions with group leaders was part of my training/trials it helped them get right inside my head.

So, I've ordered 'The Courage to Heal' and a book on healing my inner child. I was lent a copy of 'The Courage to Heal' when i was in refuge for the first time but was no where near ready for it. It helped me see how I was still surving in a state of constant crisis no where near thriving, which at the time didnt feel particulry helpfull. I think is also contains accounts by ritual abuse survivors, which had a massive impact on me in terms of believing myself. I don't think going back will be a walk in the park but I need to do something, continuing the way I am has never or rarely been an option. I was always being damaged so my sense of self protection is geared to moving on, I was never home but now its different and have to turn all that energy into healing and its not easy. Healing and surviving can seem like opposites when its on going. How could I talk to an inner child that was being tortured regularly by people with great intelligence and torture experience, all she wants is to share the details. Details I couldn't handle when it was still happening, my body was screaming those details at me all the time I couldn't let myself see her if I wanted to keep going.

Now I have to put all the thoughts of what might of been, and might still be to look at myself as is. To accept the multiples that where abusers along with the warriorers, earth mothers, priestesess, police informers, party girls, international spys, property developers and fuck knows what else. I remember always resisting the abuse of children but got to really enjoy non sexual violence against people I saw to be 'real' rapists, I knew that if I kept 'taking it to far' they would stop using me. Remebering little flashs of the things I've done gives me very mixed feelings. I'm amazed and shocked that I could do so much damage to someone, then I remeber aspects of where the violence came from and stop thinking about it. I've got a lot of guilt, complex, twisting, ingrained guilt and I want shot of it.

September 04, 2011

The order of service was forced in my hand but I didn't want anything to do with it. I knew too many words would be missing but I was glad they'd used her favourite picture all hair, tan, smile and Scotland undulating behind white clouds gathering above. Although she swore she had a shocking hangover that day I was never sure. She didn't seem that drunk the night before when she came out of the dark of my tent at me her skin all smooth and cold like tatties out the fridge.

I looked like you when I was younger. A photo at the bun fight proved it, the cutting slope of our noses that ask to be broken. Earlier at the family grave I choked on the smoke of our shared vice as the grandkids threw dirt on her lid. I felt the words she used on me too often scar

September 03, 2011

The tall sunflowers bowed their heads outside
the tinted taxi windows. Back in Scotland
the oil seed rape is short and half yellow.
Earlier my sister yanked at my niece’s arm
like an angry bell ringer or trying start a stubborn lawn mower
the silence is still heavy but wasn’t enough
to drown the homecoming of nights as warm as our hottest days.
Taking me back to stand on the tiles, tired and relieved
With someone around ten years my junior, snug
and viable under stretchy pre teen skin.
Their shock washed him out
and I held the child to my breasts
like our midwife
was David Attenborough.

Fuck the studies, I need to focus on being a mum for a while. Being a mum and going to dramatherapy. His bowels have been a bit funny recently probably made worse by me letting him eat to much fruit and drink milk..Parenting myself as well as him is complex beautiful work and its full time I need to stop convincing myself otherwise. I understand why I do it though, volunteer for far more than I can handle though and it isnt always because I'm responding to pressure from society. There is issues I need to deal with or at least identifyed and understood a bit better before I can go back to assignments and exams again. I still dont see how I have enough support to stop self medicating, but I do feel supported becuase of twitter friends, comments on my blog as such. It's all really starting to open my eyes to a world where survivor narratives are central. I know I work slowly, to slow for people face to face but over twitter and blogging, I have the space to figure out who I want to present to people. Unlike drama therapy where there is no time to struggle and fail at presenting a front, just a moment when you had to express yourself, impossible to fail. It's working well together.

September 02, 2011

Not feeling to good realy, wobling on the edge of tears a bit. There is so much I can't handle, I know I need more time but I'm so desperate to make up for lost time that I spend to much time wishing. I'm grateful a lot to but I still want more. They can't just do that to be and then get on with their successful lives leaving me in the muck. I was already in the muck, they would say and I would struggle to disagree. Still though how can systems like police, social workers, communities be so vunrable that the sort of slavery I went through could happen so openly. By abusers are everywhere, they drive buses and taxi's, they teach at schools, they work in charaties and jobcenters and the truth is that many may have legitimate claims of me commiting violent acts against them. Violence was something that all my conscious mutiplies had to accept, some easier than others. How could you go about taking all that through the courts? Child Protection Police generaly have enough current cases to deal with, the economic climate of course doesn't help.
But the bus drivers, the taxi drivers and the rest don't scare me like the celebs and the their girlfriends do. Too many memories of finding myself drugged in a bar with no mates and no one letting me leave. Everyone else with their eyes down into their drinks, waiting, talking quietly. Unpleasant.
Of course they all said afterwards that i didnt try to leave. When situations like that are regularly happening I had no option it seemed but to learn how to fight. I got trained, my knowledge got me favours. At the very least if you fight with everything you have the bastards are all ready knackered before the rape starts. I didnt care if people died, I had even up on knowing what was going on with death a long time ago. I had seen people die, night after night then saw them on the way to school every morning so I got quiet good at it. I had known children that everyone denied ever existed. The game became more about betting on me winning, the men who bet on me would try and tell me how to live to give them better odds. At least in those days I go to have a drink in the bar afterwards and sometimes not be raped at all.

September 01, 2011

in drama therapy today. I drew us fighting in beautiful countryside when we had to come up with two characters in conflict. I drew it in pastels, so every week we had to go back an use out pictures my hands and jeans get covered in green and blue. I wanted to have them calling each other names like we used to do. She was older and better at it. I called her 'pig' she's call me 'cow', I'd say 'tart', she'd say 'whore' etc. I couldn't do it though and kept it to myself. I hated remembering the constant yearning in me to understand why, wandering about that Glen alone and trying to figure it out, I think I was 7.

Today I played the part of the character based on middle sis while young dude asked the questions I wrote for her. My questions were all based on asking her why she hurt me. My answers were short just whatever came into mind. Then everyone else could ask my character questions to the group 'teacher' had lots. Afterwards I talked about a greenybrowny feeling in my belly and we moved on to someone else. It's not easy when the focus is on you, but we all go because we need it, the spotlight that is, just for a second.